world.  He would say that it was the Christian’s duty and privilege in this age to elevate the uses of this day so that everything done and said should tend to lift the race higher, and make it better acquainted with the nature of God and its own eternal destiny.  If Christ would not take that view of this great question, then I have totally misconceived and misunderstood his character.  ‘The Sabbath was made for man.’  It was made for him that he might make of it a shining jewel in the string of pearls which should adorn all the days of the week, every day speaking of divine things to the man, but Sunday opening up the beauty and grandeur of the eternal life a little wider yet.

“This, dear friends all, has been my message to you this morning.  May God forgive whatever has been spoken contrary to the heart and spirit of our dear Lord.”

If Philip’s sermon two months before made him enemies, this sermon made even more.  He had unconsciously this time struck two of his members very hard.  One of them was part owner in a meat market which his partner kept open on Sunday.  The other leased one of the parks where the baseball games had been played.  Other persons in the congregation felt more or less hurt by the plain way Philip had spoken, especially the members who took and read the Sunday paper.  They went away feeling that, while much that he said was true, there was too much strictness in the minister’s view of the whole subject.  This feeling grew as days went on.  People said Philip did not know all the facts in regard to people’s business and the complications which necessitated Sunday work, and so forth.

These were the beginnings of troublesome times for Philip.  The trial of the saloon-keeper was coming on in a few days, and Philip would be called to witness in the case.  He dreaded it with a nervous dread peculiar to his sensitive temper.  Nevertheless, he went on with his church work, studying the problem of the town, endearing himself to very many in and out of his church by his manly, courageous life, and feeling the heart-ache grow in him as the sin burden of the place weighed heavier on him.  Those were days when Philip did much praying, and his regular preaching, which grew in power with the common people, told the story of his night vigils with the Christ he adored.

It was at this particular time that a special event occurred which put its mark on Philip’s work in Milton and became a part of its web and woof—­a thing hard to tell, but necessary to relate as best one may.

He came home late one evening from church meeting, letting himself into the parsonage with his night-key, and, not seeing his wife in the sitting-room, where she was in the habit of reading and sewing, he walked on into the small sewing-room, where she sometimes sat at special work, thinking to find her there.  She was not there, and Philip opened the kitchen door and inquired of the servant, who sat there reading, where his wife was.